Autonomously controlled and/or semi-autonomously controlled machines are capable of operating with little or no human input by relying on information received from various machine systems. For example, a machine guidance system may detect a location and movement of the machine based on inputs received about the machine's environment and may then control future movements of the machine based on the detected location and movement. In order to effectively guide the machine, however, it may be desirable to ensure that the location and movement of the machine are being detected and updated with a frequency high enough to ensure proper machine operation.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,336,805 to Gehring et al. that was issued on Feb. 26, 2008 (“the '805 patent”) discloses an exemplary guidance system for a motor vehicle. Specifically, the system acquires image data of a surrounding field of the motor vehicle by using an imaging sensor. The system them extracts positional parameters of at least one potential destination relative to the motor vehicle from the acquired image data. Based on the extracted positional parameters, the system calculates an optimized travel path, so as to assist a subsequent vehicle guidance for the at least one potential destination.
Although the system of the '805 patent may be useful in guiding a motor vehicle along an optimized travel path, the system of the '805 patent calculates the travel path based on the image data of the entire surrounding field of the motor vehicle. Due to the large size of the image data, the calculation may unnecessarily consume large amounts of computing resources. As a result, the system of the '805 patent may not provide and update the optimized travel path with a high enough frequency.
The motion estimation system of the present disclosure is directed toward solving the problem set forth above and/or other problems of the prior art.